BenQ eyes No.1 position in LCD sector

Taipei, Feb. 10, 2004 (CENS)--Despite the harsh competition, BenQ Corp. aims to take the No.1 position in the domestic LCD (liquid crystal display) sector this year, expecting its market share increasing to between 28% and 30% from last year's 20%

The company boasted it would reach the market-share goal by introducing 10 up to 14 brand-new product lines this year. Recently the company has debuted two brand-new LCD products.

Huang Yu-kuo, president of BenQ's video business subgroup, said unit price of flat LCD panel wouldn't change too much with an expected fluctuation size at around US$5. Thanks to the strong support of its affiliate AU Optronics, Taiwan's leading manufacturer of LCD panels, BenQ will see a 80% annual growth in shipment of LCDs this year, double the 40% growth rate for the entire global market. With the substantial shipment growth, the company estimated its global market share to increase to 13% this year from last year's 10%.

Huang rebuffed the statement that the LCD panel industry will experience a sharp slide in price in the second quarter of this year as predicted by Hon Hai Precision Industry, arguing the panel price will remain on a steady-growth track by the end of this year.

Expecting the LCD industry to enjoy a bright outlook, BenQ will add one more production line to the existing seven lines at its Suzhou, mainland China plant in the second quarter of this year, which will help it boost monthly output to 600,000 LCDs from present 500,000.

In addition to AU, at present BenQ's major suppliers of flat panels also include Samsung, LG, Philips, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Inc.

Huang said his company shipped five million units of LCDs last year, accounting for 10% of the global shipment of 50 million units. With the global shipment of LCDs expected to grow by 40% to reach between 70 million and 75 million units this year, BenQ boasted it would post an 80% annual growth in shipment of the products this year. Based on the shipment goal, an institutional investor estimated BenQ would ship between nine million and 10 million LCDs this year with global market reaching 13%.

Own-brand LCDs account for between 25% and 30% of BenQ's total shipment last year, but the ratio will be slightly raised this year.

BenQ said its video business subgroup contributed 50% of the firm's total sales last year with the remainder going to other three subgroups of net and telecommunications, image storage, and digital media. However, the video business subgroup suffer too-low profit margin last year.